[geeks] Speaking of Mozilla.....

[Phil Stracchino]

On Fri, Jan 23, 2004 at 09:28:29AM -0500, David L Kindred (Dave) wrote:
> Actually it seems that having separate delete/purge steps is a
> "mainstream" MUA function these days.  Some of them visibly move the
> message to a "deleted items" "folder", others just leave them in place
> marked. Some do different things based on the type of mail folder you're
> using.  A third step may yet be needed to ensure that the disk space
> previously used is returned to the free pool, but that may also be
> file-system related.

Oh, indeed.  Mozilla (and Thunderbird) have two steps:  'deleting' the
message moves it to the Trash folder, then one must separately empty the
trash.  However, unless 'Compact folders' is turned on, these steps
functionally do nothing except set flags to mark what's alledegely been
done to the message.

> With most of my folders on both systems the "purge" process is still
> pretty quick, but you still wouldn't want to be waiting each time you
> deleted a message for the entire rest of the file to be re-written.
> This would especially true if you're a fan of huge folders.

Oh, agreed.  Mutt doesn't rewrite the mailbox until you exit, and up to
that point nothing is actually deleted, just marked for deletion.  When
you hit Q to exit Mutt, then it rewrites the mailbox and actually purges
the messages marked for deletion.  You have the option to undelete -- or
unmark -- a message at any time up until you actually quit Mutt.  (Even
then you have the option of exiting without actually saving any changes
to the mailbox, should you for some reason wish to do so.)

At present, Mozilla performs this step only if you have that cryptic and
undocumented "Compact folders" option turned on, and even then, Mozilla
currently does folder compaction when you *start* the Mail client, not
when you close it.


> At least the MUAs I use show you, or have a an option to show you, the
> deleted message headers so its obvious they're still there.  I haven't
> used mail in Mozilla, but it doesn't provide any clue that there are a
> bunch of deleted messages?

Nope.  The "deleted" mail is totally invisible in Mozilla itself.  The
only way you can tell it's there is to go poking around on the disk.


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